How move OS from HDD to SSD?? [Laptop with 1 hard drive slot]

[computercpu]

Hello. I bought a new laptop about a month a go. The laptop came with a 750GB HDD. Now I would want to upgrade the hard drive into a 500GB SSD. The laptop has only one hard drive slot and it's obiviously at the moment taken for the HDD. Is it possible to move the files (mainly just OS) to the SSD and how should I proceed?

What would happen, or would the laptop even work, if I just replaced the HDD with a brand new (nothing installed) SSD drive?

Thanks for your help lads!

 

[SkyNetRising]

There are several ways, you could proceed.
1. You can use desktop computer to connect multiple drives and clone partitions from one drive to another.
2. You can use USB connected drive enclosure to connect multiple drives to laptop and do the cloning.

If you connect empty drive (with no OS on it) to laptop, laptop wouldn't be able to boot operating system.
You would need to install it from optical or USB install media.

 

[Night5talker]

its best to do fresh install, you never know what will happen after some time with OS because you wanted to copy windows... if you own legal copy of Windows, you can just install it again since OEM key is binding on motherboard and CPU
take 1-2 days to install everything and you are all set

 

[ArtPog]

For all practical purposes SkyNetRising's suggestion #2 will be the way for you to go, depending on the following...
1. Does your present laptop's boot drive - the 750 GB HDD - boot & function without any problems?
2. Are the TOTAL data contents residing on that HDD LESS than the available disk-space of the 500 GB SSD you're planning to purchase?

If your answers to the above are "yes", then you can consider a disk-cloning (data-migration) operation to clone the contents of the 750 GB HDD to the SSD. If you purchase a Samsung SSD it will be packaged with a data migration program. Other SSD manufacturers also usually provide a cloning-type program. And there are quite a few freely available disk-cloning programs available on the net. Do a Google search.

As SkyNetRising indicated you can purchase a USB external enclosure to house your SSD as the destination disk for the disk-cloning operation. (You can also use one of those SATA-to-USB adapters as well, although our preference is definitely a USB external enclosure). The USB enclosure will be valuable in the future since you can install your HDD in that device and use it for storage/backup or any other secondary drive purposes.

Following a successful disk-cloning operation it will just be a simple matter to install the SSD in the laptop to replace the HDD. But don't modify the contents of the HDD in any way until you're absolutely certain the SSD is functioning properly.